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[cfp] Transnational Comics: Crossing Gutters, Transcending Boundaries

Posted 21 Jan, 2016

The Graduate Comics Organization at the University of Florida invites proposals for the 13th UF Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels, “Transnational Comics: Crossing Gutters, Transcending Boundaries.” The conference will be held in Gainesville, Florida from April 8th to 10th, 2016. Confirmed keynote speakers are comics scholars John Lent (Professor Emeritus, Temple University, Editor of International Journal of Comic Art), Derek Parker Royal (Clinical Associate Professor, University of Texas, Dallas) and international comics translator Edward Gauvin.

In the age of globalization, forms of popular culture have been increasingly marked by transcultural pollination across aesthetics, content, generic conventions and iconography. The global flow of information, media and culture increasingly requires the study of comics from a transnational perspective. A few recent publications have drawn attention to intersections of national and cultural boundaries in comics. Mark Berninger, Jochen Ecke, and Gideon Haberkorn’s co-edited anthology Comics as a Nexus of Cultures: Essay on the Interplay of Media, Disciplines and International Perspectives (2010) signaled a shift in comics studies by exploring crossovers in comics across media and nations. Daniel Stein, Shane Denson, and Christina Meyer’s edited work Transnational Perspectives on Graphic Narratives: Comics at the Crossroads (2013) was groundbreaking in redressing the dearth in transnational investigations of graphic narratives and paying attention to border crossings as well as cultural and material exchanges in comics.

The inherently dialectic, intersectional nature of comics, as manifested in image-text interplays, gutter-crossing and collaborative production, make comics a rich site for the exploration of emerging transnational crossovers. We invite a range of papers that incorporate transnational approaches to comics studies, and which address questions of translation, reception, cross-cultural exchange, tensions between global/local and center/periphery, and the transnationalization of production processes.

Suggested topics include but are not limited to:

Comics by transnational artists (those who straddle different cultures/countries in their work)

Comics that have been translated and/or disseminated across countries (for example, the translation and reception of manga and bande dessinée in the US)

Comics that deal with border-crossings

Comics that have been collaboratively created by artists of different national origins

Comics that showcase the influence of cultural forms from other countries

Superheroes crossing borders

The effect of globalization on comics industries; the politics of transnational production of comics

Reading comics through the lens of transnational studies and globalization studies

Proposal Guidelines: Please send original proposals that have not been published or presented elsewhere, along with contact information, to anujamadan@ufl.edu by January 27, 2016. All proposals will be blind reviewed, and must not exceed 300 words. Submitters will receive notification of results by February 5, 2016.

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